Satan is the father of lies. He is a master of deception and the author
of confusion.

Through the centuries, history has been rewritten with the help of the
evil one. If you asked the typical person on the street about the
Crusades, most of them would begin to disparage Christianity and speak
of ‘horrors’ committed against Muslims.

I would encourage the reader to print this article out. I am using a
piece from thenewamerican.com to dispel the lies which have been
perpetrated throughout the centuries about the Crusades. This article
may very well be scrubbed from the internet – so print it out quickly if
you can.

From thenewamerican.com

The year is 732 A.D., and Europe is under assault. Islam, born a mere
110 years earlier, is already in its adolescence, and the Muslim Moors
are on the march.

Growing in leaps and bounds, the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is
known, has thus far subdued much of Christendom, conquering the old
Christian lands of the Mideast and North Africa in short order. Syria
and Iraq fell in 636; Palestine in 638; and Egypt, which was not even an
Arab land, fell in 642. North Africa, also not Arab, was under Muslim
control by 709. Then came the year 711 and the Moors’ invasion of
Europe, as they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and entered Visigothic
Iberia (now Spain and Portugal). And the new continent brought new
successes to Islam. Conquering the Iberian Peninsula by 718, the Muslims
crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into Gaul (now France) and worked their
way northward. And now, in 732, they are approaching Tours, a mere 126
miles from Paris.

The Moorish leader, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is supremely confident of
success. He is in the vanguard of the first Muslim crusade, and his
civilization has enjoyed rapidity and scope of conquest heretofore
unseen in world history. He is at the head of an enormous army, replete
with heavy cavalry, and views the Europeans as mere barbarians. In
contrast, the barbarians facing him are all on foot, a tremendous
disadvantage. The only thing the Frankish and Burgundian European forces
have going for them is their leader, Charles of Herstal, grandfather of
Charlemagne. He is a brilliant military tactician who, after losing his
very first battle, is enjoying an unbroken 16-year streak of victories.

And this record will remain unblemished. Outnumbered by perhaps as much
as 2 to 1 on a battlefield between the cities of Tours and Poitier,
Charles routs the Moorish forces, stopping the Muslim advance into
Europe cold. It becomes known as the Battle of Tours (or Poitier), and
many historians consider it one of the great turning points in world
history. By their lights, Charles is a man who saved Western
Civilization, a hero who well deserves the moniker the battle earned
him: Martellus. We thus now know him as Charles Martel, which translates
into Charles the Hammer.

The Gathering Threat in the East

While the Hammer saved Gaul, the Muslims would not stop hammering
Christendom — and it would be the better part of four centuries before
Europe would again hammer back. This brings us to the late 11th century
and perhaps the best-known events of medieval history: the Crusades.

Ah, the Crusades. Along with the Galileo affair and the Spanish
Inquisition (both partially to largely misunderstood), they have become
a metaphor for Christian “intolerance.” And this characterization
figures prominently in the hate-the-West-first crowd’s repertoire and
imbues everything, from movies such as 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven to
school curricula to politicians’ pronouncements.

In fact, it’s sometimes peddled so reflexively that the criticism
descends into the ridiculous, such as when Bill Clinton gave a speech at
Georgetown University and, writes Chair of the History Department at
Saint Louis University Thomas Madden, “recounted (and embellished) a
massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and
informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in
the Middle East. (Why Islamist terrorists should be upset about the
killing of Jews was not explained.)” Why, indeed. Yet, it is the
not-so-ridiculous, the fable accepted as fact, that does the most
damage. Madden addresses this in his piece, “The Real History of the
Crusades,” writing:

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are
generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by
power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to
have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black
stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western
civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders
introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then
deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For
variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example,
Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or
the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are
terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

But what does good history tell us? Madden continues:

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims
really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was
born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means
of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the
world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War….

In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern
Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old
Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was
reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in
Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western [sic] Europe
asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

[The Crusades] were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious
knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which
Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At
some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself
or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defence.

The reality is that, in our modern conception — or, really,
misconception — of the word, it is the Muslims who had launched
“crusades” against Christendom. (In the true sense of the word, the
Moors couldn’t be Crusaders, as the term means “those who are marked
with a cross,” and the Muslims just wanted to erase the cross.) And like
Martel before them, who ejected the Moors from most of southern Gaul,
and the Spaniards, who — through what was also a Crusade — would much
later wrest back control over Iberia, the Crusades were an attempt to
retake conquered Christian lands.

So how can we describe the view taken by most academics, entertainers,
and politicians? Well, it is the Jihadist view. It is Osama bin Laden’s
view. It is a bit like ignoring all history of WWII until December 8,
1941 — and then damning the United States for launching unprovoked
attacks on Japan.

Christendom Pushes Back

So now the year is 1095. Just as the Muslims had invaded Europe from the
west in the days of Charles the Hammer, now they are pushing toward it
from the east. And just as they had taken the Byzantine lands of the
Mideast and North Africa in the seventh century, they now have seized
Anatolia (most of modern Turkey), thus robbing the Byzantines of the
majority of what they had left. The Muslims are now just a few battles
away from moving west into Greece itself or north into the Balkans — the
“back door” of Europe.

Rightfully alarmed and fearing civilizational annihilation, Byzantine
emperor Alexius I in Constantinople reaches out to a rival, Pope Urban
II, for aid. Inspired to act, in November of 1095 the pope addresses the
matter at the Council of Clermont, an event attended by more than 650
clerics and members of European nobility. On its second-to-last day, he
gives a rousing sermon in which he appeals to the men of Europe to put
aside their differences and rally to the aid of their brothers in the
East. Here is an excerpt of the sermon as presented by the chronicler
Fulcher of Chartres:

“Your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and
you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them.
For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked
them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as
far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is
called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the
lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They
have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and
devastated the empire.

“If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impunity, the
faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this
account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to
publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank,
foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those
Christians.”

In addition to this call, the pope articulates a second goal: the
liberation of Jerusalem and other Mideast holy sites. The pope’s words
are so moving that those in attendance are inspired to shout, it is
said, “God wills it! God wills it!” The first crusade is born.

Modernity, the Middle Ages, and Myth

Yet, in modern times, much cynicism would be born. People just can’t
believe that these medieval “barbarians” didn’t have ulterior motives.
This brings us to the “ambitious pope” and “rapacious knights” bit, the
20th-century myths about 11th-century motivations. Let’s examine these
one at a time.

First we have the notion that the Crusaders were imperialists. This is
an understandable perspective for the modern mind, as the
not-too-distant past has been one of a dominant West colonizing a world
of backwaters. Yet this was a recent and relatively short-lived
development. Do you remember how Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi considered the
eighth-century Europeans barbarians? It was no different in the 11th
century; Dar al-Islam was the burgeoning civilization. It was the
imperialist force — and this wouldn’t change for another 600 years.

Next we have two myths that contradict each other; although, considered
individually, they may seem tenable. One is that, despite the Crusaders’
purported religiosity, they were just seeking riches by the sword. The
other myth is, they were so darn religious that they were seeking to
convert Muslims by the sword. It seems unlikely that both could be true,
and, as it turns out, neither is.

Today we like to say “Follow the money.” Well, if you followed it in the
11th century, it led right back to Europe. The reality is that most
Crusader knights were “first sons,” men who had property and wealth —
much to lose (including their lives) and little to gain. And just as the
United States can drain the public treasury funding Mideast
interventions today, medieval warfare was expensive business. Lords were
often forced to sell or mortgage their lands to fund their Crusading,
and many impoverished themselves. It also doesn’t seem that the average
knight entertained visions of becoming “the man who would be king” in a
faraway land, either. As Madden said in an October 2004 Zenit interview,
“Much like a soldier today, the medieval Crusader was proud to do his
duty but longed to return home.”

As for conversion, the Crusaders were warriors, not missionaries. They
had no interest in converting Muslims; in fact, I doubt the notion ever
entered their minds. They viewed the Muslims as enemies of God and His
Church and a threat to Christendom, nothing more, nothing less. Treating
this matter in a piece entitled “The Crusades: separating myth from
reality,” Zenit cited medieval history expert Dr. Franco Cardini and
wrote:

“The Crusades,” says Cardini, “were never ‘religious wars’; their
purpose was not to force conversions or suppress the infidel.” … To
describe the Crusade as a “Holy War” against the Moslems is misleading,
says Cardini: “The real interest in these expeditions, in service of
Christian brethren threatened by Moslems, was the restoration of peace
in the East, and the early stirring of the idea of rescue for distant
fellow-Christians.”

Yet, whether or not the Crusades were religious wars, they certainly
flew on the wings of religious faith. And when the Crusaders sought
treasure, it was usually the kind that was stored up in Heaven. As to
this sincerity of belief, Madden has pointed out that Europe is peppered
with thousands of medieval charters in which knights speak of their
deepest motivations, of their desire to do their Christian duty.

Then, Professor Rodney Stark, author of the new book God’s Battalions:
The Case for the Crusades, tells us that while the knights were serious
sinners, they were also serious about becoming more saintly. Anne
Godlasky of USA Today quotes him as stating, “These knights did such
terrible things that their confessors kept saying, ‘I don’t know how you
will ever atone for this — why don’t you try walking to Jerusalem
barefoot.’ And they would do it — they took their faith very seriously.”

Moreover, when the Crusaders met with failure, Europeans embraced a
characteristically religious explanation: They blamed their own
sinfulness. Then, seeking to purify themselves, piety movements arose
all across their lands. Perhaps this is why Oxford historian Christopher
Tyerman has called the Crusades “the ultimate manifestation of
conviction politics.”

We should also note that the Crusaders didn’t see themselves as
“Crusaders”; the word wasn’t even originated till the 18th century. They
viewed themselves as pilgrims.

Having said this, it would be naïve to think that all Crusaders’ worldly
endeavours were animated by heavenly thoughts. Some say that Pope Urban
II might have hoped he could regain control over the Eastern Church
after the Great Schism of 1054. It’s also said that Urban and others
wanted to give those militant medieval knights someone to fight besides
one another. As for those on the ground, the Crusades involved a motley
multitude encompassing the regal to the rough-hewn, and it is certain
that some among them dreamt of booty and betterment.

Yet is this surprising or unusual? People are complex beings. Within a
group or even an individual’s mind, there are usually multiple
motivations, some noble, some ignoble. Charles the Hammer might have
very well relished the glory won on the battlefield, for all we know.
But it would be silly to think that was his main motivation for fighting
the Moors. Likewise, if the Crusaders were primarily motivated by
covetous impulses, it was the most remarkable of coincidences. For those
dark urges then manifested themselves just when a Christian emperor
appealed for aid, just when Europe again seemed imperilled — and after
400 years of mostly unanswered Muslim conquests.

Into the Mouth of Dar al-Islam

But however great the Europeans’ faith, the first Crusade was a long
shot. The soldiers had to travel on foot and horseback 1,500 miles —
traversing rivers, valleys, and mountains; braving the elements; dealing
with hunger and thirst and whatever unknowns lay ahead — and then defeat
entrenched Muslim forces. And the endeavour had gotten off to a rather
inauspicious start: An unofficial Crusade comprising peasants and
low-ranking knights had already departed — only to be massacred by the
Seljuk Turks.

So, now, it is August 15, 1096, and the official Crusader armies depart
from France and Italy. Arriving in Anatolia many months later, they lay
siege to Muslim-occupied Nicea; however, Emperor Alexius I negotiates
with the Turks, has the city delivered to him on June 1, 1097, and then
forbids the Crusaders to enter. They then fight other battles against
the Muslims on the way to their next objective: the great city of
Antioch. It is a must-win scenario; if they do not take it, they cannot
move on to Jerusalem.

The siege continues for seven and a half months, during which time the
Crusaders are hungry, tired, cold, and often discouraged; Antioch’s
formidable walls seem an impenetrable barrier. On June 2, 1098, however,
they are able to enter the city with the help of a spy. It is theirs.

Yet the Crusaders soon find themselves besieged and trapped in Antioch
with the arrival of Muslim relief forces. Nevertheless, they manage a
break-out on June 28, defeat the Turks, and, after a delay caused by
internecine squabbling, move south to Jerusalem in April 1099. Starving
after a long journey, they arrive at the Holy City on June 7 — with only
a fraction of their original forces. Despite this, Jerusalem will not
pose the problems of Antioch, and they capture it on July 15.

The First Crusade successes give Christendom a foothold in the Mideast
for the first time in hundreds of years with the establishment of four
outposts known today as “Crusader states.” They are: the County of
Edessa and the Principality of Antioch, founded in 1098; the Kingdom of
Jerusalem, founded in 1099; and the County of Tripoli, founded in 1104.
Perhaps the tide has finally turned in Christendom’s favor.

But it was not to be. It was still a Muslim era, and more Crusades would
be launched in the wake of Islamic triumphs. In fact, there was a
multitude of Crusades — if we include minor ones — lasting until the end
of the 17th century. However, it is customary to identify eight major
Crusades, dating from 1096 through 1270, although this does omit many
significant campaigns.

Great passion for a second Crusade was sparked when the County of Edessa
was overcome by Turks and Kurds in 1144. Led by Kings Louis VII of
France and Conrad III of Germany and advocated by St. Bernard, it was an
utter failure. Most of the Crusaders were killed before even reaching
Jerusalem, the campaign did more harm than good — and Muslim power
continued to grow.

Because of this, Madden writes, “Crusading in the late twelfth century …
became a total war effort.” All are asked to answer the call, from
peasants to patricians, either by devoting blood and treasure to the
defence of Christendom or through prayer, fasting, and alms to make her
worthy of victory. Yet these are the days of the great Muslim leader
Saladin, and in 1187 he destroys the Christian forces and takes one
Christian city after another. And, finally, after almost a century of
Christian rule, Jerusalem surrenders on October 2.

The loss of the Holy City inspires the Third Crusade. Led by storybook
figures such as England’s King Richard the Lionheart, German Emperor
Frederick I Barbarossa, and France’s King Philip II, it is sometimes
called the Kings’ Crusade. Yet it is no fairytale affair. Frederick’s
army quits the campaign in 1190 after their aged German leader drowns
while crossing a river on horseback, and King Philip leaves after
retaking the city of Acre, owing to continual friction with Richard.

Despite this, the English King is undeterred. Displaying brilliant
leadership and tactical skill, he fights his way south, taking on all
comers, and eventually recaptures the Holy Land’s entire coast. Yet the
crown jewel, Jerusalem, eludes his grasp. Believing he would not be able
to hold it (since most Crusaders will be returning home), he must
swallow hard and settle for what he can get: an agreement with Saladin
to allow unarmed pilgrims unfettered access to the city. Richard then
returns home and never sees the Holy Land again, dying from a
battle-related wound sustained in Europe in 1199.

While the passion for Crusading remained strong in the 13th century and
the Crusades were greater in scope, funding, and organization, they were
lesser in accomplishment. There would be no more Richard the Lionhearts.
Mideast Christian lands would slowly be overcome. And Jerusalem would
never again be in Crusader hands. In fact, by 1291, the Crusader kingdom
had been wiped off the map.

The Next Crusades Battle: The History Books

Because the Crusades ultimately failed to achieve their objectives, they
are typically viewed as failures. And this brings us to a common
Crusades myth. It’s said that those medieval campaigns are partly to
blame for anti-Western sentiment in today’s Middle East, but this is
nonsense. The reality is, as Madden told Zenit, “If you had asked
someone in the Muslim world about the Crusades in the 18th century, he
or she would have known nothing about them.”

This only makes sense. Why would the Crusades have been remembered? From
the Muslim perspective, they were just routine victories — like so many
others — events that would just naturally fade into the mists of time.

What in truth is partly to blame for Islamic anti-Western sentiment is
19th-century pro-Western propaganda. That is to say, when England and
France finally started colonizing Arab lands, they wanted to
rubber-stamp imperialism. To this end, they taught Muslims in colonial
schools that the Crusades were an example of an imperialism that brought
civilization to a backward Middle East. And, not surprisingly but
tragically, when imperialism was later discredited, the Crusades would
be discredited along with it. Muslims would start using the false
history against the West.

But there are many Crusade myths. For example, some would characterize
the campaigns as anti-Semitic. Yet, while there were two notable
massacres of Jews during the Crusades, there is more to the story — as
Madden also explained in the Zenit interview:

No pope ever called a Crusade against Jews. During the First Crusade a
large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army [the
aforementioned “People’s Crusade”], descended on the towns of the
Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there…. Pope
Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews.
Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews,
although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of
the Second Crusade, a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany
before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it.

This obviously adds perspective. In every war there are rogue forces
that commit transgressions. Why, the United States had the My Lai
Massacre in Vietnam and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Yet, to echo Madden on this
count, it would be unfair to claim that the goal of American forces was
to, respectively, murder innocent civilians or commit sexual abuse.

There were other Crusader sins as well. In the Second Crusade, the
warriors foolishly attacked Muslim Damascus, which had been an ally of
the Christians. Worse still, the Fourth Crusade saw the sacking of
Constantinople itself — occupied by the very eastern Christians the
Crusades were designed to protect — after the Crusaders helped an
imperial claimant gain the Byzantine throne and then were refused the
aid he had promised them as a quid pro quo. In response, the pope at the
time, Innocent III, condemned the attack (and he had already
excommunicated the Crusade). Nevertheless, the damage was done. The act
widened the Great Schism of 1054 to perhaps irreparable proportions.

Yet, again, perspective is necessary. Medieval armies didn’t have modern
discipline or rules of engagement, and they were, above all, medieval.
You could not have put hundreds of thousands of men in the field during
the course of centuries in that age without writing some dark chapters.
Really, though, you couldn’t do it in the modern age, either.

With all these failures and missteps, we may wonder why Europeans
continued Crusading well beyond the 13th century’s close. We may ask,
was it worth the blood and treasure? Yet the answer boils down to one
word: survival.

The threats to Europe mentioned earlier would not remain theoretical.
The Muslims would extinguish the Byzantine Empire — and Constantinople
would be renamed Istanbul. They would cross into the Balkans, and their
descendants would clash with Christians there in the 1990s. The Ottoman
Turks would capture the Italian town of Otranto in 1480, prompting the
evacuation of Rome. The Ottomans would occupy what is now Hungary for
158 years. And, in 1529 and 1683, they would reach the gates of Vienna.

Yet the tide would finally turn against Dar al-Islam. The Ottomans would
lose the Battle of Vienna in 1683, and, more significantly, Europe was
blossoming. It would outpace the Muslim world technologically, and in
its march toward modernity, the Christian “barbarians” would become the
burgeoning civilization. In fact, they would become dominant enough to
forget how recent their time in the sun is — and how, perhaps, it almost
never was.

So, were the Crusades really a failure? Sure, there was no Charles
Martel and Battle of Tours, no Duke of Wellington at Waterloo; there was
no history-changing engagement where we could say, ah, that is where we
slew the dragon or “this was their finest hour.” And they accomplished
none of their stated goals. But the Crusades era might have constituted
a “holding action,” a time when Christendom was pushed toward the abyss
and, outweighed and wobbling, pushed back.

Of course, this isn’t the fashionable view. But it is easy today to
characterize those medieval warriors any way we wish; they are no longer
around to defend themselves. But had they not defended the West, we
might not be troubling over the past at all — because we might not have
a present.

Brethren, it is important to be able to chronicle the events leading up
to the Crusades. We must attempt to shut down revisionist historians who
present history from a politically correct vantage point.

Truth is truth! Jesus would have us tell the truth about events in
history regarding The Crusades.

The Left have made Islam and Muslims into “victims.” Not all Muslims are
war lords or terrorists, but many are. Their prophet Muhammad was the
original War Lord, and his fundamentalist followers continue in his
footsteps.